Neil Hawke

12:00AM GMT 27 Dec 2000

NEIL HAWKE, who has died in Adelaide, South Australia, aged 61, took more than 90 wickets for Australia in 27 matches during the mid-1960s.

Broad of shoulder and strapping of physique, the tough, smiling Hawke bowled right-arm fast-medium, manufacturing unexpected deviation both in the air and off the pitch from an open-chested action. His muscle-bound approach to the bowling crease gave way to a little side-step and turn, as if moving to the strains of Johann Strauss, before his shoulder whipped through and hustled the ball on its way.

He made his debut for Australia in the Fifth Test against England at Sydney on Boxing Day 1962, having just taken six wickets for South Australia against MCC at Adelaide, a match in which Colin Cowdrey celebrated his 30th birthday by making 307. Hawke then had to wait another year for his second cap, coming into the series against South Africa in sensational circumstances after Ian Meckiff had been no-balled for "throwing" in the first game at Brisbane.

Hawke's stamina was tested by having to bowl 39 eight-ball overs at Adelaide, where South Africa rattled up a record score of 595 (Hawke taking six for 139). Then, in the Fifth Test, his competitive instinct was again tried when, batting at No 11, he had to see off the South African bowlers for 75 minutes to save the series.

Thereafter he was groomed by Australia as the type of fast-medium bowler who, with his capacity to make the ball swerve and seam, might prove invaluable on tours of England. He was duly chosen for the Ashes series of 1964 and, Richie Benaud having retired, was given the task of leading the attack with Graham Mackenzie against an English side that boasted Cowdrey, John Edrich, Ted Dexter, Ken Barrington and Geoffrey Boycott.

Although Hawke became Fred Trueman's 300th Test victim - then the record - Australia enjoyed the greater measure of success, and at the Oval, in the first innings of the Fifth Test, Hawke reaped a return of six for 47, his best to date. He bettered it the following year at Sydney in taking seven for 105 against England - although M J K Smith's side made 488 and won the game by an innings.

Such a performance was typical of Hawke's character, which relished the challenge of a tight corner. Indeed his finest hour had come earlier that year against the West Indies at Georgetown when, although Australia lost heavily, he took 10 for 115 in the match. He ended the series as the leading wicket-taker on either side, with 24 at 21.83, and also averaged 28.60 with the bat.

He seemed likely to remain a fixture in the side for many years, but was then struck down by the first of many blows of ill fortune. Playing in a game of Australian Rules football in 1966, he broke his collar-bone and was never quite the same force thereafter.

He had a poor tour of South Africa that winter, and though he took 48 wickets in Australia the next season, including eight for 62 against New South Wales in the Sheffield Shield and seven for 46 against the touring Indians, his Test career came to an end after he had again toured England in the summer of 1968.

During the early 1970s, he had several successful seasons with Nelson in the Lancashire League, and in 1971 scored six sixes in one over in a match at Thornbury, Gloucestershire (the ground where W G Grace made his name). Four of the sixes cleared the roof of a nearby hotel as Hawke made 79 in a little over half an hour.

In the 27 games of his Test career, he took 91 wickets at an average of 29.41, capturing five wickets in an innings six times. He also averaged 16.59 with the bat, rather less than his first-class average of 23.99. In all first-class cricket, he took 458 wickets in 10 years at an average of 26.39 runs.

Neil James Napier Hawke was born at Cheltenham, South Australia, on June 27 1939. He was educated at Woodville School and first came to public notice as a fine Australian Rules footballer. He turned out for the Port Adelaide and West Torrens sides, and in 1963 played for South Australia when that state defeated Victoria for the first time at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.

By then, however, he was also a professional cricketer, having signed for Western Australia in 1959 before joining South Australia the next year. He played for them for eight years, and then had one season with Tasmania at the end of the 1960s.

Hawke lived in Lancashire until 1980, when he returned to Australia. The last 20 years of his life were blighted by a terrible series of very severe illnesses arising from an infection he contracted when undergoing bowel surgery. Thereafter, he fought off kidney failure, liver damage, hepatitis and a dozen heart attacks with exemplary courage, enduring more than 30 operations in the process.